The First Time
by Kathryne Buzolic
Summary: She'd finally visit him. No matter how much it hurt...She had to. It was supposed to be closure, after a year and a half of mourning. Maybe they were right. Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock/OC...Sort of.


**Hiya! So, I had a last-minute assignment for my writing class. A one-word prompt. My word was loss. I've been rewatching Sherlock lately, and I decided to write something that could double as fanfiction. I gave a different version-which was only different with the ending-to my teacher, and she cried. I posted this on my tumblr account and a few people cried as well. I decided to post it on here and see what everyone thinks!**

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The air was crisp, cool, a gentle breeze ruffling her long red hair as she walked up to the grave. She stopped about a foot away, green eyes fixed on the name on the headstone. _Sherlock Holmes. _It'd been a year and a half since the day he jumped. She hadn't gone a day without thinking about it, thinking about him. Someone so similar to herself, yet so different, too.

She'd been puzzling over it for a year and a half. None of it made sense. He wasn't a fake. She _knew _he wasn't. Yet he'd called John and told him so, leaving a 'note' and jumping off that building. He'd killed himself without warning. She remembered standing next to John and watching in horror as he fell, unable to move. None of it made sense to her. She'd seen several people who wanted to kill themselves. Sherlock wasn't one of those people. Even though he'd kept himself behind a wall, she'd always known he wouldn't kill himself.

A lump grew in her throat as she stared at the name of the spectacular man she'd known. She hadn't attended his funeral, insisting that he wasn't dead. Though all logic said he was. No one could survive that fall. She—and John—had checked his pulse. Several times. This was the first time she'd visited his grave. She licked her lips and shifted, lowering herself onto her knees. The grass was wet with the previous night's rain, but she didn't care.

"Hello, you." she said in a hoarse voice. "I've never understood the point of talking to graves—it's not like you're going to hear me. But John insisted I get closure. Oh, John...He misses you. We all do. Your things are still where you left them, minus the tongue in the sugar. Neither of us can bear to move them. You know, sometimes I'll get a text in the middle of the night, or I'll hear someone calling me and I can't help but think it's you. That this past year has been a bad dream, and you're going to drag me off in another adventure and tell me to stop obsessing over things that will never happen. You don't know how much I wish I would just wake up from this nightmare." She sighed, looking down at her hands before speaking again. "I've met several people who've died. And I don't linger on it. A few weeks of mourning them and I move on, locking their names up in a safe and forgetting them. Funny how I can't do that with you. I've tried so many times...Even in death, you're still an impossible prat." Her breath hitched at the word death and she squeezed her eyes shut.

"None of it makes sense. I'm trying to not think about it...But every time I close my eyes, all I see is you, battered and bloody. I can't get away from it. People have stopped talking about you, for the most part. Some of us still think about you. Just the other day, Greg was at a press conference for a case, and I swear every time someone checked their phone, he was waiting for you to prove him wrong." She bit her lip, opening her eyes and staring at the smooth headstone. "I...I think we all sort of hope that this is all some sort of trick, that you'll eventually walk into a crime scene and give us one of your fantastic deductions and insult Anderson. It's a stupid, vain hope, but I don't think any of us can help it."

She took a shaky breath, shifting a bit. "I've never understood why people dwell on the last things they said to the person they lost. It doesn't make sense to me. I've never been very moved by a death, or by anything. I mean, what's the point of regretting something when that person is dead and you can apologize all you want, but they'll never respond? But lately I've been thinking about it. The things I should have said, the things I shouldn't have. And the last thing I ever said to you. 'Be careful, or I'll break your skull.' And I did mean the thing you kept on the mantle. I don't regret saying that to you. I don't regret anything. There's no point in regret, it just renders you useless when it matters most. But I can't help but think there's one thing I should have said.

"I'm not in love with you. Never have been. I don't really love anyone. But I really do think that, had you not jumped, I would have. If we'd had more time, I think I could have loved you. Oh, you would have hated that. Always called that sentimental folly, not worth wasting time over. No one's ever really loved you. Molly...It was more of an infatuation with someone she knew she'd never have. Don't get me wrong, I cared about you...but I never loved you. But, to be fair, you were just learning to tolerate me and the fact that I work in a bookshop. I still do that, you know. But I don't enjoy it like I used to. It's just going through the motions at this point. Funny. You told me that'd happen eventually. Did you ever think it'd be because you died? Seems like I'm going through the motions of everything now. Oddly enough, I don't mind."

She tucked her hair behind her ear and sighed. "I swear I keep seeing you. Is this what grief is like? To keep seeing the one you lost everywhere? It's apparently not enough for me to see your dead body every time I attempt to get some sleep. I have to live through seeing you everywhere. And what for? I didn't know you for very long, yet...everywhere I go, something reminds me of you. I just...I wish I knew why you did it. Why you jumped. Why you lied to John and told him you were a fake, that you made Moriarty up...I know you didn't. Because if you were a fake, then so am I. It's been a long time since I haven't understood something. It's been so long since I've went through every single possibility in my head thousands of times. I don't understand. I wish that was the only reason I can't stop thinking about it. About you."

Biting her lip and staring at his headstone, she was surprised to find that her eyes were watering. The tears burned at her eyes like drops of acid. Odd. She'd never cried over anyone before.

"I hate this. God, part of me even hates _you_. Why? Every day, that one word keeps appearing everywhere, and for once I don't have an answer. Why? Why did you do it? Why? Why would you _ever _do it? I knew you were a selfish prick, but apparently, you wanted to exceed everyone's expectations once again, and in the worst possible way. _Why?" _Her voice was choked, the built up tears finally breaking free and streaming down her pale cheeks. "My mother said once that death doesn't happen to _you. _It happens to everyone around you. I never realized how true that was. I never realized it could hurt this much. I want it to stop. I want all of it to stop. But wanting something doesn't get me anywhere, not in this case, because you were stupid enough to _jump off of a building!_ You better have had a bloody fantastic reason to do so, or I swear, Sherlock Holmes, I will never forgive you. None of us will. I'll never forgive you if you thought it was 'too hard'. Because that's not you. You were, by far, the strongest person I'd ever met." She took a deep, gulping breath, wiping at her face furiously. "...Come back." she finally whispered. "Come back. Amaze us all again. You were always so good at that. Do it again. If there was ever a time to be amazing...Do it now. Just come _back. Please." _

She felt pathetic. Pleading to someone who'd never hear her. Someone who'd never care. Sitting in front of the headstone of a man who'd driven her insane and crying, begging him to come back.

She'd never know that he was there, watching her with a somber expression. Only a few yards away, leaning against a tree and watching her beg for him. She wouldn't know, not for quite some time, that he turned away when she put her face in her hands and openly cried, or that it twisted his heart in odd ways to see her cry for the first time. No, she wouldn't know. Maybe she'd never know.

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**So, how'd I do? If you're wondering who this woman is, keep an eye out for my new Sherlock/OC fic, which should be published soon! I got pretty teary-eyed while writing this, and then when I was editing...Oh, I cried. Anyway, I wrote a companion piece for this, so if enough people like it, I might post that too! Tell me how I did! And, though I hope it might be obvious, I named this 'The First Time' for a few reasons. But the main one is stated just above this author's note. :D**


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